DNA tests need high standards

2:19 PM,
Jun. 5, 2013

Written by

USA TODAY

Collecting DNA from people arrested for violent crimes sometimes leads to a big payoff for the police. That's what happened in Maryland in 2009, when DNA taken from a man arrested on assault charges, for threatening people with a shotgun, matched DNA collected six years earlier in an unsolved rape case.

Thanks to the DNA match, Alonzo King was convicted of that 2003 rape and sentenced to life without parole. On Monday, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction, saying it was fine for police to collect DNA from anyone arrested for a "serious offense," such as assault, rape, murder, armed robbery ...